PlasmaC Just using pierce for circle centre

For Pierce Only you normally use a normal cut job and the Pierce Only function sorts it out. It was designed so for thick sheet you could do the piercing then clean the dross off and then run the same job in normal mode.

so to get the hole centres you would use a drill tool to get the centre of the hole I have tried it with $0 and $2

would you mind (when you have the time ) giving me the code for two test pierces from sheeetcam with the post/p F

so that I can see where I am going wrong.

phillc54 wrote:

Use the same tool as the cut. You only need to create one normal cut job, just make sure the hole pierce points are at the hole centres. Load the job normally then press the button to change to pierce mode. Then to do the cut you switch back to normal cut mode.

To continue the saga

just make sure the hole pierce points are at the hole centres.

This is the problem. If you have a say 3 holes all the same size ie 8mm you can set the perpendicular lead in to 4mm and that should work. But if the holes are different sizes you can't do that.

We don't want to do spotting. So using a lead in arc or otherwise you can't get the hole centres, you can with a drill tool in sheetcam but then pierce only does not fire the torch.

;begin test hole #1, cutting, 29.13mm
G0 X4.000 Y4.000
M3 $0 S1 (cut start)
G1 X0.000 Y4.000
G3 X0.000 Y4.000 I4.000 J0.000
M5 $0(cut stop)
;end test hole, cutting #1

With the above code plus extra holes using "drill" to get centres the torch fires and stops on all the time ie the torch just moves to the centres of each hole and does not switch off at the end.

##################################################

;begin material setup
M190 P10 (10mm mild steel 45a material)
M66 P3 L3 Q2 (wait for valid change)
F#<_hal[plasmac.cut-feed-rate]>
;end material setup
;
;begin spottest #1, spotting
G0 X20.000 Y20.000
M3 $2 S1 (spot start) #### This has been tried with M3 $0 S1
G91 (relative distance mode)
G1 X0.000001 (tiny move)
G90 (absolute distance mode)
M5 $2(spot stop) ### M5 $0
;end spottest, spotting #1
;
;begin spottest #2, spotting
G0 X20.000 Y80.000
M3 $2 S1 (spot start)
G91 (relative distance mode)
G1 X0.000001 (tiny move)
G90 (absolute distance mode)
M5 $2(spot stop)
;end spottest, spotting #2
;

Ok maybe it's time I enter the frame, I'm the Dean clive keeps refering to and first off thanks for all the help and amazing software.

Here's what's I'm after doing and what is actually happening and I've learned today with playing around.
I want to pierce the hole centers of several different sized holes in each part, also there may be several different parts nested in a large sheet all with different small holes sizes. I'd rather just pierce these than cut them and drill out later.

So a normal jet tool in sheet cam and the pierce only option doesn't really work very well because all my start points won't be on center. Creating perpendicular lead-ins for each different hole size will be a pain and time-consuming job.

The Drill tool works great and finds the centers ok but it uses the Spot tool which doesn't fire the torch unless the Voltage threshold and delay are set. I've played around with this today and got it to work. However, it's not great for this application obviously because it was never designed to do this job. Also, because it's just a parameter in Config it doesn't apply these settings to each material so it would mean playing around with the settings for each material. Again not ideal.!

So what would be good is a pierce option that works with the drill tool in sheet cam but uses the pierce delay of each material.

Thanks again, oh, and Rod the Plasma is a Hypertherm XP45 on 45A.

Alternatively, you could add a new tool name and modify the post processor to see it. Say you call it "Centre Pierce" that does not use the spotting and does a M3, tiny move and stops. That gives you more control. Use it on a drill operation.

Is anybody actually doing this using sheetcam and PlaasmaC. If so could they please post some code that works.

Edit: this is being used with the F version of the post processor

Could our chief tester test it

Clive wrote:

Is anybody actually doing this using sheetcam and PlaasmaC. If so could they please post some code that works.

Could our chief tester test it

I used to do it this way but now I use Phill's post processor. The thought is that you should just spot holes as small as possible to avoid any work hardening of the material which is pretty hard on the drill

rodw wrote:

Clive wrote:

Is anybody actually doing this using sheetcam and PlaasmaC. If so could they please post some code that works.

Could our chief tester test it

I used to do it this way but now I use Phill's post processor. The thought is that you should just spot holes as small as possible to avoid any work hardening of the material which is pretty hard on the drill

Rod. we are using the F version of the PP.

Are you actually using hole centres or arc in. We are not interested in the hardening .